


When Everything Familiar Seems To Disappear Forever

by Duck_Life



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Adorable Judith, Gen, Negan Being an Asshole, Protective Carl Grimes, Psychological Warfare, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 19:54:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8766808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Carl tries to explain Negan to Judith. Negan also makes him sing some more.





	

The porch chair might just snap from the way Carl’s gripping it, his knuckles white where his hands curl over the ends of the wicker arms. Negan’s bouncing Judith on his knee, a sick smile twisting his face. “ _You’ll never know, dear_ ,” he sings under his breath, “ _how much I love you. Please don’t take_ —damn, kid, you got that song stuck in my head.” He shifts Judith closer to him on his lap. “Sing us a new song.”

Carl opens his mouth and closes it, feeling like a walker snapping aimlessly. He thinks if he even tried to speak right now nothing would come out. But Negan is looking at him like he’s prey and Negan is holding Judith, and so Carl sings. “ _O say can you see by the dawn’s early_ —”

“No, no, not that shit,” Negan says, rolling his eyes. “Sing us a real song.” His voice lilts into a higher-pitched baby talk. “Don’t we wanna hear a better song, huh, Judith?” She looks from him to Carl, whines a little, and then settles again. “Go ahead, big brother.”

Carl swallows and starts to sing again. He can barely hear his own voice with his pulse thundering in his ears. “ _There is… a house… in New Orleans they call the rising sun_.” Judith watches him with wide eyes from Negan’s arms. “ _And it’s been the ruin… of many a poor boy._ ” He sniffs, feeling the tears cluster up and start to fall. “ _And, God, I know I’m one_.”

Eventually, Negan stands up and drops Judith in Carl’s lap. Immediately, he curls around her. “I gotta piss,” Negan says. “Keep an eye on my stuff for me.”

He takes the bat with him, so there can be no doubt that he’s talking about Judith.

“It’s okay,” Carl whispers to her, holding her close. “We’re okay.” Even though he’s been with Negan the whole time, he can’t help but look her over, his fingers skimming her arms looking for bruises. He can’t shake the feeling that Negan’s gotten his claws into her.

Judith doesn’t look scared, just confused. Her big eyes focus on her brother’s face, and on the big scar marring one side of it. With a jolt, Carl realizes she’s never seen his face uncovered like this. She reaches out with her little hands and touches the shiny scar tissue at the corner of his eye socket, cocking her head to the side.

When Negan made him take off his bandage, Carl felt like he was being scraped away. Like he was being forced to turn over a stone and reveal the ugly, horrible filth on the other side.

Judith doesn’t look scared, just confused. “I got hurt,” Carl tells her. “It’s just… it’s just a big boo-boo.”

She examines him with those great big eyes, and then she puts a hand on either side of his face, and then she leans forward and gives him a little kiss right on the spot where his right eye used to be. “All better,” she says.

Carl kind of can’t believe it. When Negan called his face sickening, disgusting, gross, it made sense. It was understandable. _Have you looked at yourself in the mirror_ , he’d asked, and of course Carl has. He just tries not to. The giant scar, the gaping hole, _is_ sickening, disgusting, gross. But that didn’t stop little Judith from giving it a little kiss, the same way Michonne kisses her skinned knees and splinters.

“All better,” Carl says, holding her close and trying to ward off the lump in his throat. “Thanks, Judy.” He holds her tight, not moving, trying not to count down the seconds until Negan gets back. “Judy, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry about that… about that man.”

“Who is he?” Judith says eventually, looking up at her big brother. “Who is he?”

Judith doesn’t look scared, just confused. And Carl doesn’t know what to say. He feels like she deserves the truth but it’s too cruel and fucked up to tell her.

“Well,” he says finally, “you remember those stories about the Big Bad Wolf?” She nods, eyes like saucers. “And you remember how he… how he acted sweet like Little Red Riding Hood’s granny? He looked nice and he talked nice?”

“He had big ears!” she said, pointing to her own ears. “And big teeth.”

“That’s right,” Carl says. “That man… is the Big Bad Wolf. And he might talk nice… but he’s really mean. And really bad.” Her eyes well up, and he feels a pang when he remembers how quiet she cries. She grew up hiding from the dead, somehow learned how to cry silently. No kid that young should have to do that. “We need to be brave,” he says. “Like Little Red Riding Hood.”

She keeps crying. “The Big Bad Wolf _eats_ Little Red Riding Hood.”

Shit. He forgot. “The lumberjack,” Carl recovers, rocking her gently. “We need to be brave like the lumberjack that saves the day. You and me.” She’s hanging on his every word and he’s so, so scared. He doesn’t know what the fuck to say. He doesn’t know what the fuck to do. He just needs her to be okay. “Can you do that?”

She bites her lip, and even with the tears still flowing from her great big eyes, she nods.

And then Negan comes back, like he always does, and sets the bat back down on the porch. “Adorable,” he says, watching Carl with Judith. “Alright, alright, gimme back that little angel.” Carl realizes that Negan’s not going to take her, that he’s going to make Carl _hand her over_ , and for a second his vision blurs.

He breathes. He grounds himself. Brave like the lumberjack. He rubs a small circle on his sister’s shoulder, lets a soft lock of her hair slip through his fingers, and then he gives her away.

“There we go,” Negan drawls, shifting her in his arms before sitting back down. “You like spending time with Uncle Negan? Huh?” And he kisses her on the forehead again.

“I’m going to kill you.” Carl says it low, and steady, and he’s surprised at himself. He didn’t actually think he was going to say it out loud.

“Sure you are, kid,” Negan says, not even looking at him. He’s making faces at Judith, bopping her on the nose, jiggling her on his leg. It looks wrong, like a photograph flipped upside-down. “That’s what your daddy said, too. And yet here I am.”

“I mean it,” Carl says, staring straight ahead because if he looks at Negan holding Judith he might lose his nerve. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Then why haven’t you?” It’s not the response Carl was expecting, and his mouth snaps shut. “Seriously, kid, what’s stopping you? I mean, hell, twenty minutes ago you were _holding a fucking barbed wire baseball bat_. I was looking the other way. You could’ve done it. And before that, in the truck. You had the gun aimed right at me and you didn’t even think about firing.”

“I…” It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It wasn’t supposed to last this long. The plan was kill Negan and die trying. It was simple and easy and it wasn’t supposed to go like this.

“See, this is why I do it the way I do it,” Negan says, smiling at Judith. “I kill people right off the bat before I can get attached to them.”

Carl sputters. “I’m not _attached_.”

“Oh, no, I know, I know you don’t _like_ me,” Negan says. “Which is crazy given the un-fucking-believable about of hospitality I’ve shown you. But, sure, I know you don’t like me. But you like that I treat you like a grown-up. You like a challenge. You like having what you think of as a _worthy_ adversary.” Carl shakes his head but he can’t say anything. He could’ve killed him and he didn’t, and now his mistake has led to this— Judith in Negan’s arms. “Face it, kid. That dartboard upstairs is a worthy adversary for you. Don’t think I missed all the holes in the door beside it.”

Carl flinches, hates himself for it. Negan found his weak spot back at the Sanctuary— the damn missing eye. And then he found an even bigger, more vulnerable weak spot. Judith turns away from Negan and looks at her brother.

She starts fussing, like she’s trying to get away from Negan. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Negan says, getting into her face. “What’s wrong? You got ants in your pants? Carl, I think maybe she wants to hear another song.”

Carl swallows, looks at Judith, looks at Negan. “Okay, okay,” he says, trying to hold his head up for her. Trying to be brave like the lumberjack. When he sings this time, his voice is strong and even. “ _Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? The Big Bad Wolf? The Big Bad Wolf? Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_ ”

Judith looks at him and she doesn’t look scared or confused. She looks brave.


End file.
